Uncovering the full truth about IRS abuse of power: Rob Portman

Protesters held signs against the IRS' targeting of conservative groups outside the Federal Building in Cleveland May 21, 2013. Marvin Fong, The Plain Dealer

Big scandals start
off as small stories. The controversy engulfing the Internal Revenue Service seems to grow bigger
every day. What began as what the Obama administration said was a handful of “rogue
agents” in a local Cincinnati office has turned into a scandal that runs all the
way to the highest levels of the IRS and maybe beyond. The question every
American should be asking is this: Just how far does this story go, and when is President Barack Obama going to do something about it?

In the run-up to the
last election, I started receiving troubling reports from conservative groups in
Ohio about alleged mistreatment by the IRS. In response, in March 2012, I
spearheaded a Senate letter to the IRS demanding answers. Six weeks later IRS
officials assured us that only legitimate criteria were used to evaluate
tax-exempt groups. That assurance proved false, and instead of correcting the
record when they say they learned the truth a week later, the IRS remained
silent. The truth was uncovered only when the press began to report on the
agency’s ideological targeting.

But the cover-up
didn’t end when IRS misconduct became public. Initially, the IRS sought to
explain away its political targeting as a “shortcut” to deal with a “surge” in
tax-exempt applications. But the record soon revealed that tax-exempt
applications actually declined the year the targeting began. Then the IRS
claimed that any misconduct could be attributed to a handful of “rogue”
employees from a regional office, rather than at the direction of senior
officials in Washington, D.C. But investigators soon found letters targeting Tea Party groups signed by Lois Lerner, the Washington-based IRS official who led
the division that carried out the targeting policy. Ms. Lerner refused to answer
questions from a congressional committee investigating this issue, choosing
instead to invoke her Fifth Amendment right against
self-incrimination.

Now an IRS
whistle-blower has confirmed what many had suspected but could not prove — the
misconduct involved not only Ms. Lerner and the Washington office generally, but
specifically included the IRS chief counsel, one of only two Obama political
appointees in the entire agency. Several news outlets have now reported that the
chief counsel may have met with the president at the White House on April 23,
2012, just two days before the IRS issued a revised set of “be on the lookout”
instructions to IRS agents reviewing tax-exempt applications that appear to
target Tea Party groups for more stringent review. Perhaps most troubling, the
White House’s timeline of events — who knew what and when — has changed repeatedly
since news of improper targeting first became
public.

And the scope of the
scandal is growing. Just a few days ago, congressional investigators released
emails suggesting that staff at the Federal Election Commission were engaged in
conservative targeting of their own, perhaps with improper help from Ms. Lerner
and the IRS. Now evidence is mounting that one of the most powerful agencies of
the federal government — the Securities and Exchange Commission — has also engaged
in political targeting. In a letter to the chairwoman of the SEC, congressional
leaders revealed that documents produced for the Committee on Oversight and
Government Reform “indicate that the SEC has been under immense pressure from
elected officials and special interest groups as part of a government-wide
effort to stifle political speech.”

With each new
revelation we discover more incompetence, and more examples of politicized
enforcement of the law — all enemies of good governance. And while the Obama
administration has voiced outrage about government misconduct, it has failed to
provide the American people and congressional investigators with critical
information and promised transparency. Outrage has not led to
action.

Instead, the
president and his administration have ignored requests for more
information — including multiple specific requests from me. They also have not
fully answered a bipartisan investigation by the Senate Finance Committee of
which I am a member. In total opposition to the words and assurances of the
White House, the IRS, which answers to the president, has simply failed to
comply with many of the committee’s requests.

Based on its conduct,
the position of the Obama administration seems to be that if they ignore these
scandals long enough, they will simply go away. The White House has gone so far
as to refer to the outrage surrounding revelations about the IRS as a “phony
scandal.” That’s a shame. This pattern of misconduct represents everything that
is wrong with Washington, and it is behavior like this that has shattered the
trust of the American people in their
government.

If the Administration
does not come clean soon, the stain from this scandal will not just be on the
IRS, but on the Administration as a whole.

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